Jurors Judge Ailing Jackson

The last time a Santa Maria, California, jury deliberated on Michael Jackson, the pop star was hit with a $5.3 million judgment.

This time, he could be slammed with a 20-year prison sentence.

Jurors in Jackson's child-molestation trial began deliberations Friday afternoon as closing arguments wrapped.

"He is hoping and believing that the jury is going to acquit him," Jackson spokeswoman Raymone Bain told reporters outside the Santa Maria courthouse.

The singer--who weighed in at 120 pounds at his November 2003 arrest, but who appears to have dropped below that mark as prosecutors have likened him to a boozing, child-preying lion of the Serengeti--received treatment at an emergency room near his Neverland Ranch home Thursday night or Friday morning, the hospital said.

Officials at Santa Ynez Valley Cottage Hospital in Solvang, California, would not disclose what was ailing Jackson. Bain said comic Dick Gregory warned Jackson on Thursday that the singer might be dehydrated. Bain said, though, she could not confirm if Jackson sought treatment at a hospital.

Jackson previously checked himself into Valley Cottage Hospital for a bad back on Mar. 21, delaying court proceedings and incurring the wrath of Superior Court Judge Rodney S. Melville.

Avoiding that previous pajama-bottoms spectacle, Jackson appeared in court on time and fully clothed Friday morning. He was accompanied by the biggest contingent of Jacksons to date at the trial--sisters Janet and LaToya and Rebbie, brothers Jermaine and Randy, and parents Joe and Katherine.

Defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. wrapped his arguments in about two hours, getting in final shots at Jackson's accuser--a liar, he said--and the accuser's family, who he said were the people who taught the boy to lie.

"It only takes one lie under oath to throw this case out of court by you," Mesereau told jurors, per Reuters. "And you can't count the lies [here]."

Mesereau argued that the Jackson case was the family's crowning dubious achievement--"the biggest con of their careers," he said.

Just as prosecutor Ronald J. Zonen was beginning his final remarks, Janet, LaToya and Rebbie Jackson stood up and exited the courtroom en masse.

In the rebuttal that the sisters Jackson missed, Zonen asserted that Jackson was "in love" with his 1993-94 accuser, and that the current accuser was a "clone" of the previous boy.

As he did Thursday, Zonen tried to punch jurors' buttons, telling them that they themselves would call police on a porn-collecting, alcohol-imbibing grown man, like Jackson, who invited children into his bed.

With the closing arguments finished, the case was handed over to jurors, who ended their first day of deliberations at about 2:30 p.m. without reaching a verdict.

Jackson left the courthouse at about 12:40 p.m. He will wait out the verdicts at Neverland, a 30-mile drive from Santa Maria.

The 12-member jury faces the task of sorting through 13 weeks of testimony, matching up the evidence, arguments and counter-arguments to a 10-count indictment, and deciding:

Of the charges, only the alcohol charge may be considered a misdemeanor. The others are felonies.

Jackson has pleaded innocent to all charges.

On the online gaming site Bodog.com, bets were being taken on whether Jackson would be convicted of molestation. The odds were favoring no.

On the prayer page of the Michael Jackson Fan Club Website, one devotee wrote of lighting a candle to "lift up the jury before God and pray that they rule in all fairness."

"I pray that Michael will be acquitted of all the charges, in Jesus Name [sic], and he will be restored," the post continued. "To God be the glory!"

With deliberations beginning, the year-and-a-half-old case is finally ending.

The probe broke open on Nov. 18, 2003, with a police raid on Neverland. Two days later, on Nov. 20, 2003, Jackson was booked.

An arraignment turned dancing party followed in January 2004. Keeping the heat on, prosecutors convened a grand jury in March 2004, tweaked their charges (dropping a couple of the molestation counts, adding the conspiracy allegation) and won the current 10-count indictment in April 2004.

Jury selection began on Jan. 31, with a panel selected less than a month later. The proceedings began Feb. 28, with opening arguments by prosecutor Tom Sneddon, the lawman who'd pursed Jackson a decade ago.

Judge Melville kept the trial moving at a brisk pace--the aforementioned pajama bottoms incident excepted--avoiding much of the circus atmosphere of Jackson's last trial in Santa Maria.

In that protracted 2002-2003 civil battle, which pitted a concert promoter against Jackson, the pop star was allowed to travel to Germany during the proceedings, whereupon he proceeded to dangle his youngest son from a hotel balcony. Ultimately, the jury sided with the promoter.

Although Jackson is nothing if not a veteran litigant--London's Guardian once estimated he'd been named in 1,500 lawsuits--he is a novice criminal defendant.

Sneddon appeared close to ringing up Jackson on charges in 1993, when another 13-year-old boy reportedly told police the entertainer repeatedly molested him. But in 1994 that case was thwarted when the boy stopped cooperating with authorities. Around the same time, the boy's family received a reported $23 million settlement from Jackson.

Though Jackson avoided arrest in the 1993-94 investigation, his career couldn't avoid a crash.

Prior to originally being accused of child molestation, the former Jackson Five prodigy's first four solo albums, including 1982 phenomenon Thriller, combined to sell 135 million copies worldwide. After facing that first criminal probe, his four subsequent albums collectively sold 38 million.

Jackson's last major album, Number Ones, was released on the same day of the 2003 Neverland raid.

Now 46, Jackson is a twice-divorced father of three.

Make that, a twice-divorced father of three whose future rests in the hands--and votes--of 12 men and women in Santa Maria, California.

"I know that none of you would want to trade shoes with him right now," Bain said of Jackson Friday. "Because this is going to be the worst part of the trial."